


Civil Twilight

by bellatemple



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode: s03e07-08 Magic Hour Parts 1-2, Getting Together, Multi, Season/Series 03, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24121945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellatemple/pseuds/bellatemple
Summary: Set late season three.It was an otherwise ordinary Tuesday, the day Duke Crocker died. He seemed to be doomed that way, always to die on a Tuesday.
Relationships: Duke Crocker/Audrey Parker/Nathan Wuornos
Comments: 10
Kudos: 40





	Civil Twilight

**Author's Note:**

> "My chance to say something  
> Seemed so brief, but it wasn't  
> Now I know I had plenty of time  
> Between the sunset and certified darkness  
> Dusk comes on and I follow  
> The exhaust from memory up to the end  
> Of civil twilight"  
> \-- Civil Twilight, the Weakerthans

It was an otherwise ordinary Tuesday, the day Duke Crocker died. He seemed to be doomed that way, always to die on a Tuesday. 

He was working in his bar, doing some perfectly ordinary maintenance before opening. Tightening joints on wobbly chairs, polishing out scratch marks on the bar. A bulb in the center of the room burned out as he passed beneath it, and he glanced up with a muttered "seriously?" before going to get his step ladder and one of his spares. He'd just finished screwing in the new bulb and stepped off the ladder when it happened. 

It came out of nowhere. He would _swear_ he'd been alone in the bar. Not that he could swear to much of anything when he was busy trying desperately to breathe. 

He wasn't the only one to die that day. That morning, one Ms. Natalie Sosa, Haven High Spanish teacher and art lover, suddenly broke her neck while sitting down for breakfast in her kitchen. A little more than an hour later, a young man named Brandon Thorpe suddenly collapsed in the middle of math class, having suffered a massive heart attack. When Haven High's vice principal, Robert Webber, keeled over in the hallway inexplicably unable to breathe, the school closed early for the day and all the students were sent home. 

None of which made this Tuesday particularly extraordinary. Haven was just like that sometimes. 

Duke didn't know any of this, of course. He had no reason to pay attention to the comings and goings of high schoolers. All he knew was that one moment he was standing in the middle of his otherwise empty bar, and the next he was yanked backwards onto a table, an unbearable pressure across his shoulders and mouth, unable to draw even enough breath to scream. 

He tried. His lungs and vocal cords spasmed in protest. His hands clawed for whatever was holding him down, but encountered nothing save his own skin. He flailed his legs, kicking over his step ladder and knocking his toolbox to the floor. He made as much noise as he possibly could, strained every muscle in his body trying to escape, but to no avail. In a few minutes, he lost consciousness. A few after that, he was gone. The force that held him to the table vanished with the stopping of his heart, and he slid gracelessly to the floor. 

Audrey and Nathan did know about the deaths at the high school. They were called in when Webber was brought to the morgue, and Dr. Lucassi found himself faced with three inexplicable deaths in the span of two hours. 

"Three deaths in one morning," Audrey said as she and Nathan left the morgue. "All tied to the same school. Sounds like a trouble to me." 

"Heart failure, anaphylactic shock, and a broken neck," said Nathan as he climbed into his truck. "Not a very consistent trouble." 

"They're very consistently dead," Audrey pointed out. "And there's a consistent lack of reasons for each." 

"Could check in at the Herald," Nathan suggested. "See if this has happened before." 

"I'll give Vince and Dave a call." Audrey pulled out her phone and shivered. "Hey, can we swing by the Gull first? I need a jacket." 

Duke would never know it was a forgotten jacket that saved him. 

Audrey couldn't say what made her glance into the bar on the way up to her apartment. It was simply a habit, maybe, a custom of looking for Duke in his element whenever possible. Whatever the reason, she spotted his prone, twisted legs through the window as she went past, and nearly broke the doors in her rush to get to his side. 

"Audrey?" Nathan came in hot on her heels, only to freeze when he saw what lay before him. Duke had been dead for nearly an hour already, and he looked it, his skin pale and his lips and nails tinged blue. Both Nathan and Audrey had seen dead bodies innumerable times before, and in far more gruesome condition than Duke's was. That didn't make seeing him this way any easier on either of them. 

"Call an ambulance," Audrey ordered. She ignored Duke's pallor as she bent over him, breathing fruitlessly into his mouth. "Come on, Duke. Please." 

"Audrey." Nathan had his phone out, but didn't dial. He was still frozen, his mind stuttering over the details of the tableau. The step ladder and scattered tools. Duke's closed and sunken eyes. Audrey bouncing on his chest, counting out desperate beats as she tried to restart his heart. 

The image abruptly blurred. This was the only sign Nathan got that he was crying. 

"Parker. Stop." 

"He's not dead." Audrey didn't pause in her desperate CPR. "He's not allowed to die." Her voice broke and so did the ice in Nathan's veins. He dropped his phone and grabbed her arms, pulling her away and against his chest. She was so warm under his hands, a brilliant, fierce furnace in an otherwise empty universe. 

"Parker. Audrey. He's gone." 

Audrey let out a choking noise that broke his heart. She was the one who could always make him feel that as well. "No." She clung to Nathan's arms, squeezing tight enough to bruise, and tried to will Duke to open his eyes. "No, he can't be. He can't." 

Nathan pressed his face into her hair and cried for them both. 

Audrey took three painful, hitching breaths, then pulled out her phone. She wouldn't ever admit to it, but in the back of her mind she'd been planning for this since Nathan's resurrection party at the Gull. They lived dangerous lives in a dangerous town, and each had their enemies. She'd known her boys could die. Had seen it happen to both of them already. And she'd known that it would always be unacceptable. 

Funny, Nathan always seemed to die on Tuesdays, too. 

"Dwight," she said when the man answered. Nathan stiffened against her. "Get Noelle and bring her to the Gull. Now." 

Nathan sucked in a breath but didn't say a word. 

"I can't do that, Audrey," Dwight said. 

"I'm not asking, Dwight." 

"It'll put her in danger. She and Moira are in hiding for a reason." 

"Then do it quietly." 

"Audrey —" 

"Duke's dead." Audrey's tone was sharp now. Colder than Duke's skin. Her body was still warm in Nathan's hands. 

Dwight didn't answer for several moments. Audrey wasn't sure whether to scream or sob. 

"The cabin's remote," he said finally. "We might not make it back by sundown." 

"Then stop wasting time." 

Dwight agreed, and Audrey hung up. 

"Parker," Nathan said, still hanging onto her tight. Thanks to her he could feel his heart racing, spurred on by a desperate hope. "Are you sure?" 

"We saved you," Audrey said. "We're saving him. I'm not doing this without him." 

They had hours yet before Dwight would get there, even at his fastest. They had three dead bodies from a high school to investigate, a potential killer trouble to solve. They were heartbroken and terrified, but they were still good cops, so they carefully moved Duke up the stairs to Audrey's apartment and laid him out on the couch. He hadn't stiffened yet. As Audrey draped a blanket over him, Nathan assigned a patrol car to watch the Gull, spinning a story about a possible break-in with the ease of a man who wrote two versions of every case file. Once the car had arrived, they finally went to the Herald to ask about any histories of grouped, unexplained deaths. 

They didn't mention Duke's when they explained the situation, but both of them counted his among the trouble's casualties in their own private theories. This only made things harder — he had no clear connection to the people at the school. 

"There's the MacAffie family," Dave suggested. "There were stories when we were kids." 

"Right," said Vince. "You never crossed a MacAffie."

"MacAffie," Nathan said. He called the name into the station to check the school's rosters. "No MacAffies registered at the school." 

"No," Vince said. "I'd guess not. James MacAffie only had daughters." 

"Lovely girls," said Dave. "We were in school with them. Sharon married Luke Thompson, if I'm not mistaken. Don't remember about Carol." 

"Carol married Luke, you nincompoop," Vince said. "Remember? They were voted prom king and queen. I still remember her in that dress. . . ."

"Right." Audrey cut them both off before they could dig themselves deeper into their reminiscences. She was doing her best to focus on the job at hand, but couldn't stop thinking of Duke going cold on her couch. "Thompson, then. And let me guess, Sharon married someone named Smith?" 

"Don't have any Smiths in Haven," Vince said with a little chuckle. 

"And only the one Jones," said Dave. 

Nathan and Audrey left them to trace the lives of the MacAffie sisters while they looked into Brandon's friends at the school. By unspoken agreement, they stopped when the evening light went gold and returned to the Gull, dismissing the patrol car and retreating upstairs to sit vigil until Dwight and Noelle arrived. 

Duke lay just where they'd left him, his skin now grey and mottling where the blood had settled along his back. 

Nathan couldn't look at him. Audrey couldn't look away. Nathan stared out the window at the sun while Audrey knelt on the floor at Duke's side, his cooling hand clutched in her own. 

"Sun's almost down," Nathan said, finally looking back. 

"Dwight will get here," said Audrey. "He has to." 

Nathan watched her watch Duke, watched passion war with despair in her eyes, and came to an overdue conclusion. "You're in love with him." 

Audrey looked up, her eyes glistening in the dimming light. "You're not?" 

Nathan was saved from answering by tires in the gravel lot. He rushed to the door and shouted down for Noelle to hurry. 

She all but flew up the stairs and through the door, skidding the last foot or so on her knees as she reached for Duke's face, racing the sun and winning by a nose. 

Duke's complexion warmed and he drew his first breath in hours. Dwight entered the apartment to find Audrey clutching a baffled Duke in delight while Nathan clutched the back of the couch and looked on. 

"Sasquatch," Duke said, a little breathless. Audrey was holding him very tightly, but it was a good kind of tight. One that made him feel warm and secure and didn't remind him of any mysterious death grips at all. "Noelle? What's going on?" 

Dwight raised his hands. "Don't ask me. I just got here." 

Noelle held her ribs, sitting on the floor next to Audrey. "You — could have warned me — about the CPR." 

Duke's eyes flicked over the gathered group again, and for all that he had Audrey wrapped around him like a blanket, he shivered. "Oh," he said, very very softly. " _Oh._ " 

"What happened?" Nathan fell into his cop voice on reflex, unable to look closely at how he felt seeing Duke alive and well again. How it felt to see him clutched in Audrey's arms and imagine what it would feel like to hold him just as close. Closer. Unable to process his answer to Audrey's question. "We found you downstairs. Did you fall?" 

Duke shook his head, his hand coming unconsciously to his throat, to the now unscratched and unbruised skin there. "I don't — I was working. Fixing stuff up. Then . . . someone grabbed me." 

"Who?" Audrey asked, all vengeful steel. Duke thought she might get up and hunt the culprit down then and there. Assuming she managed to let him go to do it. 

"I don't know." Duke frowned. The memories were fuzzy, hard to grasp. Dying was a trauma like none other, and his mind shied away whenever the memories came close to the surface. "No one. There wasn't anyone else there, but I was grabbed, and — and choked —" 

"Smothered," Noelle said softly. Duke snapped his eyes to hers, and she looked back apologetically. The people she helped seldom remembered their deaths, but she always did. 

Duke saw the fading imprint of bruises on her cheek in the shape of fingers. He abruptly lost nearly all the color he'd gained in being brought back to life. 

"Duke?" Nathan finally reached for him. 

Duke made a hurt sound in the back of his throat and tore free of Audrey's grip, tripping over her and the couch and his own feet in his rush to get to Audrey's bathroom before he threw up. 

The others watched him go for a moment, too stunned to react, save for Noelle, who stared at her hands in her lap. 

Audrey moved first, Nathan only half a step behind. Dwight stayed outside with Noelle. 

"Should we go?" she asked him. 

"Soon," he said. "It isn't safe to stay." 

"I wanted to thank them." Noelle stared at the bathroom door, wringing her hands. "They gave me back my real sister." 

Dwight nodded slowly. He imagined what it would be like to have his sister back in his life, the one he remembered growing up. The one who wouldn't have taken their father's side after Afghanistan. The one who would have come to him, held him up when Lizzie died. 

"We can stay," he said. He told himself it'd been a long drive, and that he wasn't in any rush to get back on the road. "For a little while. But they, uh." He looked at the bathroom and cleared his throat. "They might be awhile, though." 

"Right." Noelle shifted from the floor to the couch. "Well. Maybe I can leave a note." 

In the bathroom, Duke sat on the tile between the toilet and the tub, trying to get his breathing back under control. Audrey sat next to him, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, tallying points of contact. Drinking in the heat of him even as he spiralled back down from his panic attack. 

Nathan leaned against the sink and offered Duke a glass of water. "'S not easy," he said. "Coming back." 

"No." Duke took the glass and drank it down and told himself he didn't wish it was bourbon. "No, that's — that's not it." 

Audrey rested her hand on his upraised knee. "Talk to us, Duke." 

Duke swallowed, glancing sidelong at them both, then staring at the floor. "Smothering." He raised his hand, palm out, and pressed it forward into the air. It shook. "That's, uh. That's how I did it. With Nix." His face hardly moved, but Nathan could still see an emptiness growing there. A quiet, bottomless horror at his own actions. 

And here Nathan had wondered if Duke might grow to enjoy killing. 

"It's a horrible way to die," Duke said, hand still out, staring into a gaping nothing. "It's — and I —" 

Audrey pressed into him from the side, trying to shore him up with her own body. "I'm sorry." 

"It's," Duke started, but couldn't force the 'okay' past his lips. "Is that what this was?" He looked up at Nathan. Nathan was easier to look at right now than Audrey was. Nathan had objected to Audrey's manipulations that day almost as strongly as Duke had. "Some kind of — comeuppance trouble?" 

Nathan frowned and looked at Audrey. "The three others." 

Duke did look at Audrey then, snapping around fast enough that his neck cracked. "Others?" 

"Two teachers and a student from Haven High," Audrey said. "Mr. Webber might have poisoned someone, I guess." 

"And Ms. Sosa could have pushed someone down the stairs," said Nathan. 

"They're dead?" Duke asked. "I had Ms. Sosa in tenth grade." He stared past his knees. "She was hot. Webber was a dick." 

"Could Brandon have given someone a heart attack?" Audrey asked. Nathan shrugged. 

"You guys are freaking me out," said Duke. 

"Wait." Nathan narrowed his eyes and studied Duke. "Smothered. Hand over your mouth?" Duke looked away and shuddered. Nathan nodded. "Didn't Vanessa say the tattooed man would grab you by the face?" 

Duke closed his eyes and tried not to throw up again. 

"That's it." Audrey sat up, that familiar _knowing_ dancing in her brain. "They're not dying how they killed someone else. They're dying how they're _meant_ to, just — early." 

"I hate everything about this conversation," Duke said. He curled up and put his head between his knees. Audrey grimaced and wrapped herself around him again. She wished she could promise to fix that death too, the one Duke had had hanging over him since Vanessa died in his arms. But she only had a week left before her own end. She'd saved both her boys, and would be leaving them both so soon. 

"It's not vengeance," Nathan said, burying himself in cop work so he wouldn't have to look too hard at either of them, at Audrey's clear love for Duke, and the lingering stress of Duke's untimely death. They'd fixed Duke. They'd fix this trouble, and then he'd fix things for Audrey. That was what they did, after all. They fixed each other. 

Duke just tended to be part of the breaking, first. 

"No, it is," Audrey said slowly. "Or at least it's anger. Who's usually the first suspect in a murder investigation?" 

"Family," Nathan said. "Spouses." 

Duke picked his head up. "Ms. Sosa never married." 

"Webber's a widower," Nathan said. Audrey tilted her head at him and he shrugged. "I was in his history class when it happened. Don't think he ever remarried." 

Audrey nodded. "And Brandon's friends said he didn't have a girlfriend or boyfriend." 

"Also," Duke said. "None of these people had reason to be angry with me." Nathan and Audrey gave him identical skeptical looks. "That I know of." 

"Brandon was a pretty cute kid," Audrey said. "I bet someone at least had a crush." 

"Crushes are hard." Nathan suddenly found it hard to look at Duke. "Especially when you're a teenager." 

"Pretty easy to get pissed at a teacher and a vice principal, too," Audrey agreed.

"So you need an in on the school's gossip mill," Duke said. "At. . . ." He glanced out the window and tried not to think about where the day had gone. "Dinner time on a Tuesday." 

"Before whoever our troubled kid is gets mad at anyone else." 

There was a knock on the bathroom door. Duke startled hard. He'd forgotten anyone else was in the apartment but them. 

"Hate to interrupt," Dwight said, opening the door a crack and peering through. "But there's a Carl Vessey here to talk to Audrey." 

Audrey straightened from her slouch against the tub. "Is he a teenager?" 

"No," Dwight said. "But his daughter is." 

They sat down together in Audrey's apartment, Carl and his daughter Simone on the couch, Audrey on the coffee table in front of them. Nathan stood by the hearth and Dwight and Noelle waited in the kitchen. Duke stayed in the bathroom, knowing he couldn't confront his killer without trying something rash. He had no desire to test Noelle's trouble two sunsets in a row. 

Carl and Simone Vessey had had a long, strange day. It had started with Carl cleaning the gutters on their house and discovering a nest full of smashed bees. He'd rushed inside to call the school and pull his daughter out of class, only to find that she'd been sent home anyway, after the mysterious death of her vice principal. 

Carl had been lucky in his day. The troubles had been dormant during his angry teen years. But he'd heard the family legends from his mother, Sharon, and had spent his life practicing meditation and emotional control. He'd done his best to pass his knowledge down to his daughter, to curb her darker instincts and teach her to practice kindness and forgiveness to anyone who might wrong her. But she was young and headstrong and really, really bad at Spanish, and when her fear of failure had peaked that morning while studying for a vocabulary test, the old MacAffie trouble had activated, and Ms. Sosa had broken her neck thirty years too early. Then Brandon had rejected her note in math class and had the heart attack he'd have otherwise suffered on his 68th birthday. And Mr. Webber, the creepy vice principal, had leered at her in the hall and lost his lifelong battle against peanuts without ever even touching a legume. 

Carl had held his daughter that afternoon while she sobbed and told him about her terrible day, and thought about her growing up in a troubled Haven. He thought of the fears of his friends in the Guard, and of their stories of the trouble-killer, and despite himself, for only an instant, he wished Duke Crocker would die. 

And so Duke did. 

Audrey listened to the entire story, her face serious and empathetic even as her own fury burned in her belly. This man's careless thought had nearly taken Duke from her. Nathan wanted to demand to know what had taken Carl so long to come looking for help. If they hadn't happened by the Gull, it would have been too late to get Noelle to him before sunset, and he would have stayed dead. He bit back his recriminations. They'd found Duke in time, that was what was important. And Audrey would help make sure this trouble didn't hurt anyone again. 

As Audrey sat and watched Carl cling to his daughter's hands, she thought about how easy it was to wish ill on other people. How insidious this trouble truly was. How many Thompsons in town might potentially have it as well. When the story was done, she turned to Simone and spoke with her about fear of failure, about rejection and predatory adults, and healthy outlets for her darker thoughts. Carl watched his daughter's face fill with guilt as she learned what she was, what she had done, and he wished he'd never directed his trouble at Duke Crocker. In that moment, Carl Vessey would have happily died to free his daughter from this curse, to let her live her life and think whatever private thoughts she liked without fear of hurting anyone else. Had he known Duke was alive, was just twenty feet away working through his own calming meditation practice, he would have burst into the bathroom and demanded to die. 

Instead, Audrey gave Simone Claire's number, and saw them both out. She hugged Noelle fiercely tight as she and Dwight prepared to leave as well, thanking her over and over again until Noelle's cheeks turned bright red and she promised Audrey that it was fine, that her ribs and face didn't even hurt anymore. That she'd been more than happy to help. Audrey leaned against Nathan's chest as she watched the girl go, and felt her body begin to shake. 

Duke waited until only Audrey and Nathan were left in the apartment before coming out of the bathroom, his goatee damp from the water he'd splashed on his face to help control the rollercoaster of relief and existential dread that followed a resurrection. He was alive and he was healthy. But he knew, now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what it would feel like when his life finally ended. The pain and the fear, and the emptiness that would follow. 

He gave Audrey and Nathan a false smile and a cheery wave, but didn't look at either of them in the eye as he stood in the bathroom door. "I'll, uh. I'll get out of your hair." 

Audrey bit her lip as she looked him over, her heart pounding wildly in her chest. She thought of how he'd looked, simultaneously sprawled and crumpled on the Gull's floor, and felt her own rollercoaster plunge downhill. She remembered that other Tuesday, the one that had been reset, when Duke had lain before her in the street, smiling even through his final breath. She thought of Nathan, bloodied and broken in her trunk while she desperately searched for the woman behind the resurrection trouble. Nathan, bleeding in the street on his own nonexistent Tuesday, telling her all he felt was her. She thought of kissing Nathan. Of kissing Duke. Of Duke's smile, the real one, and of Nathan's rare, unselfconscious laugh. 

She thought _One week, I have one week and then I'm gone._

She thought _I don't have enough time left to fix them if I screw this up._

She watched Duke start for the door, his shoulders hunched against the weight of his own mortality. She watched Nathan's own shoulders tighten with the fear of losing them both. 

She thought _Screw it._

Duke let out a startled sound when she flung herself between him and the door. He shot a glance at Nathan and found him half a step behind, where he'd been all day. Where he'd be forever, if Audrey let him. Nathan was right behind Audrey as she dove into Duke's arms, right there as she grabbed Duke's jaw and kissed him for all he was worth. 

"Audrey," Duke managed. "What —"

"I can't lose you," she said. "Even if we only get a week." 

Duke looked at Nathan again, full of guilt and trepidation. He'd betrayed Nathan too many times, and didn't want to do it again. Nathan blinked hard in return, his jaw clenched, and stared back. 

Audrey elbowed Nathan in the stomach. "Well?" 

Nathan tilted his head down to look at her. At her small, hopeful smile, the first he'd seen on her all day. He remembered her earlier question. Had been mulling it over in the back of his mind since she'd asked it. He'd known the answer once, a long time ago, when he'd been a boy in school with a crush. He knew how easy the switch could be flipped, the thin line between love and hate. 

"I'm not kissing Duke," he said. 

Duke snorted, startled. "You wouldn't feel it anyway." 

"Yeah." Nathan gave him a sidelong look. His brow and his lips quirked up in tandem. "That's the only reason why, though." 

Duke blinked back. He'd thought the day had finished surprising him. 

"I don't have time to fix you two," Audrey said. "I don't want to have to try. Can we — can we just have this week? The three of us?" 

Duke threw caution to the wind and leaned down to kiss her back. "You already fixed us both, Audrey. You saved us." 

Nathan nodded. He tried not to watch them kiss. Then he tried not to enjoy it. He failed at both. "Suppose the rest is just . . . paperwork."

"Come to bed with me," Audrey said. "Both of you." 

And they did. 

It was a not-at-all ordinary Tuesday when Duke Crocker died, even for Haven. And it was an even more extraordinary Wednesday morning when he woke, holding Audrey Parker and listening to Nathan Wuornos snore. 

He would die again. They all would, eventually, maybe painfully, maybe soon. Almost definitely too damn early. But in the meantime, at least, they had each other. 

They could fix anything else along the way.

**Author's Note:**

> So I had an anxiety attack yesterday and this fic emerged out the other side of it fully formed. Brains are weird. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
